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Court Orders French Cop-Watching Site Blocked

PARIS — A court here has ruled that French Internet service providers must block access to a Web site that shows pictures and videos of police officers arresting suspects, taunting protesters and allegedly committing acts of violence against members of ethnic minorities.

Law enforcement officials, who had denounced the site as an incitement to violence against the police, welcomed the decision.

“The judges have analyzed the situation perfectly — this site being a threat to the integrity of the police — and made the right decision,” Jean-Claude Delage, secretary general of the police union, Alliance Police Nationale, told Agence France-Presse.

But free speech advocates reacted with alarm, saying the ruling, issued Friday, reflected a French tendency to restrict Internet freedoms.

The site, called Copwatch Nord Paris I-D-F, is an offshoot of the so-called cop-watching groups that appeared in the United States in the 1990s. In the United States, the courts have generally ruled that filming the police is protected by free speech guarantees in the U.S. Constitution.

In France, there is no equivalent to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which bars Congress from making any law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for the development of a “civilized Internet,” promoting stricter law enforcement in the digital sphere, in areas ranging from protecting copyright to preventing the spread of child pornography.

“This court order illustrates an obvious will by the French government to control and censor citizens’ new online public sphere,” said Jérémie Zimmermann, spokesman for La Quadrature du Net, a Paris-based organization that campaigns against restrictions on the Internet.

The police had said they were particularly concerned about portions of the site showing identifiable photos of police officers, along with personal data — including some cases in which officers are said to express far-right sympathies on social networks.

The initial complaint against the site was filed by a Paris police officer who said he had received a bullet in his mailbox after his picture had appeared on the site. He was joined by other officers.

The case was then taken up by Claude Guéant, the French interior minister. He had asked the court to issue an order blocking only certain pages of the site — those showing the most sensitive personal information. But Internet service providers argued that this would be impossible, given that they had been unable to identify the host of the site or its creators.

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The French Association of Internet Access and Service Providers said it was relieved that it had not been asked to try to “filter” the site in this way. It said that while it did not want to encourage the blocking of sites, it did not object as long as the judicial process had been followed.

“As long as the necessary safeguards are respected, members will be happy to comply with the judicial decision,” said Nicolas d’Arcy, legal adviser to the association.

Cop watching is not exactly new; in 1991, the beating of a black motorist, Rodney King, by Los Angeles police officers was videotaped by a bystander with a camcorder. The acquittal of three of the officers a year later led to widespread rioting in the city.

In Berkeley, California, an organization claiming to be “the original Copwatch group” had already been set up in 1990. From there, the movement spread to other U.S. cities, adopting the Web and other tools as digital technology advanced. Eventually, it crossed the Atlantic to Britain and, now, France.

A report by Amnesty International in 2009 was sharply critical of the French record on police brutality, as well as the authorities’ response. “Allegations of beatings, racial abuse, excessive force and even unlawful killings by French police are rarely investigated effectively and those responsible are seldom brought to justice,” the report said.

The police union said violence against police officers had been on the rise, too. On Friday, for example, an officer was killed in the city of Bourges by a knife-wielding assailant, the police said.

The “I-D-F” in the name of the French site is short for “Île-de-France,” the region that includes Paris and its suburbs, the scene of frequent tension between the police and young members of ethnic minority groups.

The court ordered that the site be blocked immediately, but it was still accessible late Friday.